Sunshine Valley

 A place to call home

     Evie woke up in a strange room. She didn’t feel scared, not even out of place. In fact a very strong sense of belonging filled her. This room had a very secure feeling to it. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this way. There was always some change going on around her to make her feel just a little unsettled. But not here. There was the fleeting thought of how she had gotten here.

    She wondered down a hall into a living room then to a door leading to the porch. There she saw Dillon stretched out against the banisters watching Teka play in her pen.

    Dusk was approaching; preparing the world for the darkness that followed.

    “Didn’t this used to be the Patterson’s Farm?” She asked from inside the screen door.

    He slowly turned around to face her, “yeah.” His face looked ghostly in the approaching night.

    “Did you buy it all?”

    “Yes.”

    “You’ve done a lot of work. It looks great.” She finally joined him on the porch, sitting across from him, leaning up against the opposite banister. Her feet were at his knees.

    “Thanks. It gives me something to do.”

    She chuckled. “We used to sneak up here all the time. You broke your leg some where around here. It was in a barn. Teka’s barn wasn’t the one.” She pointed into the yard.

    “It’s behind the house a piece.”

    “I remember you was terrified that you’d get in trouble. Did you?”

    Dillon turned to face her. God she was so beautiful. “No, Jack lied for me. He told dad that he was teaching us to ride. A snake scared my horse and he threw me off.” He looked back toward Teka.

    “Your dad always scared me.”

    “He had that effect on people.”

    “Are our names still in the attic?”

   He lowered his head. When he spoke his voice was very dry. “Yes.”

    Evie felt nervous all of a sudden. Dillon never did cause her to feel uneasy. She thought for a moment about what to say next. “Why did you buy this house. When I left to go to college, both Patterson’s had passed and their children had moved away. This house hadn’t been lived in for,” she thought, “10 years?”

    His chest was so tight he couldn’t breathe. He focused his attention back to Teka. 

    She got up to leave. “Don’t go.”

    She sat back down watching him for a moment. He looked lost. Lost in another time perhaps. “I can’t thank you enough for taking such good care of her. She looks so happy here.” 

    “Her greatest pleasure is causin’ me pain.” He didn’t grin or crack a smile.

    “What’s that suppose to mean?” Evie was a little miffed over his comment.

    “She won’t let me near her. I can’t even brush her. Every time I get near her, like you just saw, she acts out.”

    “Maybe it’s because you’re a man. She has had a hard way to go because of men.” Evie was trying to make him feel better. There was a heavy sadness radiating from him.

    “I would believe that if she didn’t like your dad.”

     “Who takes such good care of her?”

     “Simon Ledbetter.”

    “Well,” she sighed. “There goes that hypothesis.”

    The look on Dillon’s face was clueless. “Say what?”

    She couldn’t help but smile, “a hypothesis is an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument.”

    “One of your college words.” His tone was so flat it caused her to shiver.

Sunshine Valley